Friday, November 19, 2010

Honestly, this sort of post is why I would be better off with a Tumblr account, but hey, here we go. Besides, I just finished a 15-page research paper on the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 and I need a good way to celebrate.

1. Oh God, the Doghouse Just Fell Off the Front of the LorryAs I'm typing this paragraph, I'm losing my "Top Gear" virginity. I've heard enough stories about some of the ridiculous things they've done on this show, and I've been itching to watch this show for some time now. Thanks to the magic of Netflix on a video game console, I'm now on my third episode and loving it. (Season twelve, if you're curious.) I love the fact that I (as well as many other friends of mine) am/are not HOLY CRAP NOW THAT OTHER LORRY IS ON FIRE (ahem) Sorry about that. I love the fact that many of my friends and I are not car fans, but this show definitely has enough humor to appeal to a wide audience. I'm hoping to keep watching more of this, because it's quite good. I understand that there's an American version debuting on the History Channel on Sunday... Honestly, I'm a bit scared. I don't know if we can really match the unique British-style humor and general enjoyability I'm seeing here.

2. Poker? I 'Ardly Know 'ErI preordered Poker Night at the Inventory back on September 3 (or so my tweeting indicates). It was an impulse buy, half because because I was in the mood for something poker-y at the time, half because it had a bunch of characters I recognized in it and the concept seemed ridiculous enough to work. It's now mid-November, and the game is still slated to debut Mid-November. Having now seen the preview video, my thoughts are faltering a little bit. If, from what I gather from the video, the game boils down to playing poker with four characters from random games, there had better be a ton of witty banter to go along with it, or else the game is going to go stale pretty quickly. I'm still hoping for the best, but I'm starting to feel leary about my (under $5) decision, and the fact that no actual release date has been finalized yet worries me a smidge.

3. BIT.TRIP FALL POINT AND LAUGHAnother impulse buy, I bought BIT.TRIP BEAT. Verdict: Not worth the price. If you're not familiar with the game, just think of a one-player Pong in which everything you hit is timed to coordinate with the music. This should be a good concept, but something kinda falls flat in the final package. One thing I really like about the game is that each level takes (totally guessing here) 10-15 minutes to complete, so it's really an endurance challenge. Unfortunately, each long level builds up to a rather underwhelming boss battle at the end. The first boss is the only slightly novel boss (level two is just Breakout, level three is Pong against the AI that's heavily stacked against you). And after three bosses, that's it. The entire game is three levels long. It's sadly not worth the $9 I paid for it. That said, it still is a decent game (except for the bosses), the music is pretty good, and the endurance factor makes the game oddly replayable, so I'd still recommend the game to a friend, but only after the price drops to at least $5, if not $3.

4. One Day, I Will Regret Everything I've Written on the InternetI've been thinking a lot about the future of this blog. While I would like to continue using it as a place for musings about games, television, and other media-based oddities, it's getting to that point in time (namely, near the end of my college career) when I need to start thinking "professionally". I don't think the quality or nature of my posts would change, but I think I need to spruce things up and make this place more presentable. The Uniqlock? That's gotta go. The Onion Ring Tally? That's staying. The somewhat overused Blogger template with some minor color tweaks? That's something that's really got to be changed. In fact, it'd probably be for the better to get out of the *.blogspot.com domain just for the sake of additional "professionalism" and buy an actual domain name for myself (although choosing a professional-sounding name is going to be hard, considering that I'm already battling against otherfamouspeople). In any case, I'm thinking I've got to fix things up for the sake of "professionalism", as much as it hurts. I'm thinking of throwing up some sort of portfolio for projects and writings I've done, plus keeping the blog (and archives) alive. So my main question is, does anyone have any suggestions for how to get started on the breaking-free-from-Blogger-and-starting-to-look-professional process?